


Diary of a Mad Man

by fabricdragon



Series: An Avengers Blood [2]
Category: Dracula & Related Fandoms, Iron Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: AU-Vampire, Alternate Universe, Blood Drinking, Character Turned Into Vampire, F/M, M/M, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-30 15:47:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5169482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fabricdragon/pseuds/fabricdragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony Stark started becoming ill, trouble sleeping, bad dreams, after  battling some really strange Doombots.  Then he  came to in the hospital feeling fantastic, after the doctors told the Avengers he was dead.  He feels great, and his troubles are just beginning.</p><p>Chapter titles are taken from song titles, as is the story title.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Diary of a Mad Man

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Sunset to Dusk](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2433620) by [tinglebop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinglebop/pseuds/tinglebop). 



Tony burned his fingers on the new metal join, again; he glared at the project with disgust. Shutting down the welding tools, he scrubbed at his face and wondered what was wrong with him. He only knew he couldn’t sleep, it was horrible. He couldn’t remember why, though.

“Perhaps, sir, you would finally consider taking a break from this project, given that you haven’t been to sleep in 43 hours?” Jarvis’ voice was OH so reasonable. Tony just snarled.

“I take it that is a ‘no’, sir? Very well, shall I order more food and coffee or would you prefer Ms. Potts with a tranquilizer dart?”

That actually got Tony to laugh. He suddenly realized he was exhausted and swayed in his seat. He slid off the chair and rolled under his work bench. He was unconscious before he finished settling his head on his arms.

_He was battling an army of Doombots- it must be Tuesday, there were always Doombots on Tuesday- and one of them blew his armor to hell. He blasted it with a repulsor, and ran over to slam a metal rebar through its heart. The Doombot was bleeding; it looked up out of red gleaming eyes and sank its teeth into his neck…_

“AH!” Tony sat up and bashed his head into the underside of the work bench. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

“Two hours, 12 minutes, sir. That is the longest you have stayed asleep in almost 9 days,” Jarvis reported as ordered.

Tony crawled to his feet and immediately typed in what he remembered of the dream, once again cursing himself for not doing this from the beginning. If he had only known that it wasn’t a weird one-of-a-kind occurrence at the start… _Oh well, no point in worrying about it now_. This one was closer to the reality of the last Doombot attack, at least. The damned things had been everywhere, but this time there had been a central controller Doombot that regenerated FASTER than the others. It hadn’t bitten him of course, just sprayed that weird red lubricant fluid all over when the metal I-beam had crushed its chest. Tony looked over his notes on previous dreams: there was a pattern here, but he was too tired to make sense of it.

“Jarvis, there’s a pattern… Find it.” Tony put his head down on the workbench and passed out.

***

When he woke up he felt better than he had in… well, probably 9 days, he supposed. He had finally managed to sleep _. He didn’t even remember dreaming!_ He went to rub his face and realized his arm was… bandaged? _He must have had an IV. Well, it was out now_. He managed to focus slowly. He was in the Stark Industries infirmary, lying in a hospital bed, with one of those complicated looking IVs next to the bed. Normally if he woke up here he was hurting badly, or stoned on pain killers, but he just felt…

…

Actually, he felt great.

Which is why he was surprised when Pepper came in with Happy, both of them looking wrung out and cried out, being followed by a grim looking doctor.

“I am sorry, Ms. Potts, we tried, but-“ the doctor froze in place staring at Tony as if he’d seen a ghost.

Tony was trying to figure out what was wrong. _He was fine... why was Pepper… oh God, one of the team?!_

“Pepper? Pepper where is everyone, what happened?!” He got out of bed and stood up, getting his balance. _Damn he felt great; whatever they gave him must be awesome._

Pepper was staring at him really oddly. “Tony?” she said in the smallest, most pathetic voice he’d ever heard. He wouldn’t have believed it came out of her if he hadn’t been there. “Tony?!” and he had an arm full of Pepper and she smelled like bad hospital coffee and everything was ok, because Pepper was ok.

“Boss? Tony?! YOU’RE ALIVE! “ Happy almost killed them both hugging them.

“Why wouldn’t I be alive? What are you talking about? What HAPPENED?!” Tony must be missing a lot, there must have been a fight; he couldn’t remember one though. “Is everyone ok?”

Pepper was babbling about everyone being in the waiting room, and her going in first. Tony scooped her up and hugged her. “It’s OK, Pep. I’m fine!” He worried about how long he must have been out for: Pepper weighed nothing; she must have lost a lot of weight.

He half carried her out of the room. He was in a hospital gown and nothing else, but he didn’t care. Pepper was ok, Happy was following him, crying happily about him being ok. _Where was everyone else?!_

He turned the corner into the waiting area. “Oh thank God…”

They were all there. Everyone except Thor, but he was probably in Asgard; Tony didn’t think he could forget Thor coming back. He swept the room with his eyes: it was confusing. Natasha looked so stunned, it was almost funny. Clint was gaping at him from the middle of the room; he must have been pacing. Bruce… Bruce had been crying? Steve had been slumped in a corner, and was looking up with a desperate expression.

“I don’t understand, you’re ok… You’re all ok…” Tony couldn’t make sense of it. “So why is everyone so upset?”

***

After hours of doctors, and Avengers, and friends, trying to convince him to go back into the hospital room and be hospitalled at, he finally made it clear that the only place he was going was back to the penthouse.

“For God’s sake! They thought I was dead! They told you I was dead! Why the hell would I trust those idiots?” He stalked into the penthouse clutching a waiting room magazine in front of his dignity, since the hospital gown wouldn’t quite close enough.

“You don’t understand, you looked like hell, your vital signs kept plummeting, and when we found you you were so anemic it’s a miracle we could even find a pulse! “ Bruce had been babbling about his medical condition the whole way to the penthouse.

“Bruce, it’s ok... I’m fine, right? It’s a bright beautiful…” he glanced out at the night sky, “…err starry night out there, and I’m fine.”

Steve put a hand on his shoulder. “Apparently you had been ill, and hadn’t told anyone.”

“I thought it was just weird nightmares, Cap, honest. If I had known I was sick, I would have called Bruce.” The guy really was worried, he could tell. “Look, just let me get dressed in something that doesn’t need me to hold a magazine in front of my crotch, and then we can talk.” He turned to Bruce, “Anemic?”

“Very.” Bruce said shakily.

“Must be why I’m craving steak. Order in a big pile of whatever for everyone, but I want a steak, two steaks, extra bloody.”

He was furious at the doctors for making them worry so much. He tried to figure it out as he got dressed. _Probably the monitors were giving bad readings. Not the blood tests, so he must have been really anemic, but the transfusions would have taken care of that. The heart monitor, though... must have been interference from the arc reactor. That was it. Normal medical equipment just wasn’t going to handle his arc reactor, and the doctors didn’t know how to listen around it. They hadn’t let Bruce handle it because he was too personally involved.   Well the whole green rage monster may have been part of it; most people weren’t that comfortable with him._ He glanced in the mirror and thanked some unknown nurse flunky for keeping his goatee neat.

He walked back out, feeling much happier in real pants. “Guys, I think I figured out what happened. The monitors just weren’t designed for long term proximity to my arc reactor, that’s all. So even after I was better from whatever happened, the monitors were degrading.   I’m guessing the new doctors didn’t know how to work around my arc reactor anyway, and probably were just seeing what they expected, what with the monitors saying it was so bad.” He hated how worried they looked.

“It’s ok. Honest guys, I haven’t felt this good in years! We’ll figure out what happened soon enough; for right now, I’m just really glad to be out of the hospital.”

“You… actually look really good,” Natasha admitted. “You... Look better than you should, Tony. You didn’t see how you looked when we first got there, back when they said it was bad.”

“Anemia and exhaustion. I probably looked like shit.”

Clint, bless him, who was back to looking almost his usual self, just nodded. “Tasha, remember how bad I looked after… err… some mission that no one else needs to know about, at all, ever.” He coughed.

Pepper was sort of randomly coming up and hugging him. _It must have looked really bad._

Luckily the food arrived to take everyone’s mind off it.

Weird, Tony normally loved Thai food but the smell was bugging him. Still, the steaks were awesome. Some joker had replaced his scotch with paint thinner, though.

“Ok, seriously? Who tampered with this scotch?”

“TONY!!!” Pepper wailed.

“Seriously, Tony,” said Bruce, “you shouldn’t even think of alcohol right now. You need to rest and let the medications work out of your system.”

 _Oh. That’s probably why it tasted so weird. Yeah, no point in wasting a good drink when he couldn’t taste it._ Everyone stayed as long as they could, but they had been up, some of them for quite a while, while he had been unconscious. He shooed them out; after all, he was FINE. He just wasn’t tired, that’s all.

“You probably will be,” said Bruce as he stood in the doorway of the elevator. “Just randomly, suddenly get really tired. If that happens just go to bed, ok? Your body is still healing.” And then he left.

 _Thank God_. He loved them all dearly but it was too much, too many, and they were all so WORRIED about him. Meanwhile he felt like dancing, or singing, or punching walls, or throwing Pepper on the couch and fucking her until she forgot her own name.

That got him to stop.

 _Pepper wasn’t … Pepper wasn’t there for that anymore._ _She was there for him, but not like that._ Suddenly the energy singing through his body wasn’t that great anymore. The penthouse was empty, and it smelled like Thai food and worried friends.

“Jarvis, I’m going out.”

“Sir, you are supposed to be resting.”

“Not tired. Get everyone out of the way and get one of the less conspicuous cars ready. The night is young and I need to burn off some steam.”

“Perhaps sir could burn off some steam going over the medical records? Or his sleep records?”

“Nope.” He grabbed a totally not Tony Stark’s style athletic jacket from the back of the closet and left the building.

***

The first nightclub was too loud, too bright, and no one there had the intelligence of a house plant. The second one was, if anything- if possible- worse. He drove around for a while before he ended up at some kind of waterfront dive, with fires lit in fifty-five gallon drums outside and people hanging around talking, while a shitty band played inside. Tony parked a few blocks away and walked in.

No one ever expected Tony Stark at these kinds of bars, or this kind of party. For tonight he wasn’t a billionaire, wasn’t anyone special; he was just one more guy with an Iron Man knock off beard. Most of the time the people he met were nothing special, but every now and then you ran into real people worth talking to. Every once in a blue moon you ran into a girl who wanted to fuck you because she thought you were cute, not because you could buy her diamonds. _Or a guy_ , Tony admitted, as he noticed the incredibly fine ass on the guy next to him at the bar.

As it turned out he didn’t get laid that night, although he did end up with several phone numbers. He did, however, have a great time. It turned out this particular waterfront dive had a crazy eclectic mix of hipsters, actual artists, and a few people who really enjoyed talking science. Oh, most of them weren’t educated enough to do much with it, but it was pure joy to get into an argument over the science, ethics, and potential consequences for mankind of the Einstein-Rosen bridge technology. Eventually the crowd had thinned to mostly his little group, and had in fact devolved into a debate as to which science fiction show more accurately predicted what would happen to humanity, when the bartender reluctantly ordered them out. Nice guy, actually, but he’d let them stay past closing by a bit already.

He was walking back to his car when he realized he was being followed.

 _Three guys,_ he eventually figured out. Not professionals, way too sloppy for that, although he had to admit his standards for professionals were perhaps a touch high. He could hear them so damn clearly, it was embarrassing. One of them was wearing a nose watering cologne… W _ait…_ There had been that one guy at the bar, the one that had left early, who had glared at him for staring at pretty bar boy’s ass. _Jealous boyfriend?_ He knew better than to run- never let them know you knew they were there- but he reached into his pocket and coded Jarvis to send the suit.

They jumped him before the suit got there. Three guys on one, hissing words like ‘faggot’ and yelling threats. His adrenaline normally would have kicked into bright focus, but tonight it SCREAMED. Suddenly they were moving so slowly, and he was moving so fast, and everything Steve and Clint and Natasha had ever tried to teach him was pouring through his muscles like it had always been there, and they weighed nothing, and he felt so GOOD.

He came down off the combat high when the suit landed next to him, all red and gold. That’s when his mind started putting the pieces together again. _He shouldn’t be able to see this well; certainly not the red of the suit, the blue of his jacket, the tan of his khaki pants_. The fight came back to him in perfect clarity…

The first man had grabbed his jacket and his arm, while the second had hit him in the gut. He should have been doubled over, but instead he had… thrown? the second guy. Thrown him bodily into the wall and heard him hit it with a really bad sounding ‘thunk’. He had slid to the ground and hadn’t moved again. Tony had spun, so fast, and hit the guy holding his arm with a martial blow-a stiff fingered forward thrust Natasha had insisted he learn- and he had felt it go into the man, too deep, and touched something he knew was bone. Then there had been a smell that drove him almost mad. The third man, the one from the club, hadn’t even had a chance to move into position. He was staring at Tony, holding a knife in one hand, and then he had turned to run… and Tony had leaped for him, growling… grabbed the man by his hair and yanked his head back… and sunk his teeth into his throat.

He staggered and looked around with horrified eyes. There was a man, lying against a wall, quite a ways away from the fight, with his brains visible on the bricks above his head. There was a man lying in a spreading pool of blood and gore with a wound the size of Tony’s hand in his body, just below the heart. There was a man lying at Tony’s feet-knife still held uselessly in one hand- throat ripped half out, with entirely too little blood around him. Tony wanted to be sick: that taste in his mouth was blood, he knew that, but he couldn’t make himself sick.

He threw himself into the suit and begged Jarvis to take him home.

 

 

 


End file.
